


Two Birds

by Glare



Category: Person of Interest (TV), The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Dark!Team Machine, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, dark!Finch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:03:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glare/pseuds/Glare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one moment, Elizabeth Keen is certain she’s about to die. She’s been an FBI agent for less than a month, she and Tom are approved for their adoption, and she’s going to be murdered in this rickety cabin in the woods like some stereotypical horror film heroine because Hector Lorca is a slimy, witness-killing weasel who can’t even clean up his own messes properly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> My muse is at war with my other multi-chapters, so before I go round 3 with one of those, here's this. Because the solution to hating multi-chapter is clearly to start another one.  
> Obviously.  
> I've been turning over the idea of a Blacklist/POI x-over for some time, and finally got it down. Let's face it, if Harold was a little more Mr. Egret and a little less Mr. Swift when it came to the Numbers, he'd definitely be a contact of Red's--if not a blacklister.  
> Everybody's probably super OOC in this. I don't even care.  
> Rating and tags and title subject to change. Keep an eye on 'em.
> 
> For real though I'm so bad at titles it'll probably change like 4 times sorry in advance for the confusion.

For one moment, Elizabeth Keen is certain she’s about to die. She’s been an FBI agent for less than a month, she and Tom are approved for their adoption, and she’s going to be murdered in this rickety cabin in the woods like some stereotypical horror film heroine because Hector Lorca is a slimy, witness-killing weasel who can’t even clean up his own messes properly. To make matters worse she can’t even put up some token of a fight, beyond her prior escape attempt, thanks to the sedatives Kornish injected her with. She would be in hysterics, if she could. Unfortunately, even that is out of her reach. So when her murderer pushes the wheelchair closer to the acid bath waiting further into the room, when he hauls her up from the chair by the armpits and begins the laborious process of dragging her to her inevitable doom, there is quite literally nothing Liz can do.

Just like there is quite literally nothing Liz can do when Kornish suddenly staggers, accompanied by the sound of metal against flesh, and she falls from his grasp with an unceremonious thump. From her place on the cool tiles, she gets a good look at expensive, Italian leather shoes as they glide away from her, approaching Kornish’s prone form. Stanley doesn’t make it to his feet at first, sent sprawling by a kick to his ribcage, but makes it there afterward when he’s hauled upright by his throat. Liz has yet to make out anything clear about her potential savior beyond a pair of fine shoes, but she gets the vague impression of a suit before the pair vanish from her line of sight.

There’s a faint rumbling sound—someone talking perhaps? Her senses are still a bit too fuzzy to make it out—and a splash. She may be under the influence of powerful narcotics, but there’s no mistaking the agonized screams that follow for anything but, and she’s suddenly presented with the horrifying realization that this third party has thrown Kornish into his own acid bath. She can taste bile at the back of her throat.

And then Mr. Third Party is hauling her up from the tile and placing her back into the wheelchair. She screws her eyes shut, the only part of her she can still move, because maybe not being able to see her approaching demise will make it easier to accept. But doom does not come. Instead, the man’s hands are gentle as they smooth over her clothes, likely searching for signs of serious injury. There are none, she knows, beyond soreness in the shoulder Kornish had stabbed her in. In hindsight, it could have been much worse.

“You’re going to be fine,” the man says, and yes, that rumbling noise was his voice. Something is draped over Liz’s shoulders, and when she dares to open her eyes, the man is already gone. Liz might have thought it a dream, if not for the warmth of his jacket around her and the sickening hiss of the roiling acid as Stanley Kornish dissolves into nothing.

\--

Had you asked her even mere hours earlier, Liz would have told you that there would never be time when the sight of Raymond Reddington was a welcome one. She proves herself wrong when he sweeps into the room, gun raised and body stiff. The relief that washes over his face at the sight of her alive and relatively unharmed was matched only by her own at the sight of him. Raymond Reddington may be a monster, but he’s the monster that claims to have her best interests at heart.

“Lizzie?” Red asks softly once he’s determined that there’s no threat lurking, crouching at her feet and devotions his attentions to her. “Lizzie, what happened?”

She can’t speak yet, and there’s a part of her that doubts that she could find the right words even if given the chance, but Red follows her gaze to the now-still pool and seems to understand. One of his hands card through her hair soothingly before falling to hover over the jacket around her. Liz hadn’t noticed before, but there is something sticking out of the jacket’s breast pocket. Red’s eyes flicker over her face, seeking permission he apparently finds, before plucking the item from its confines.

It’s a business card: thick, expensive cardstock bearing the silhouette of a small bird and a single, elegant H; cryptic in a way Liz might have delighted in at one point, but is currently too exhausted to deal with.

The sound of glass shattering interrupts the silence, and Red hastily tucks the card into the pocket of his own coat. He cups her cheek with one hand, drawing her attention away from the noise of approaching combat boots, and forces her meet his eyes.

“Lizzie,” he says sternly, in the tone she’s starting to think of as his Orders from on High voice, “you have to tell them that I killed Kornish. Do you understand?”

She manages a weak nod.

Then there are agents swarming into the room, drawing Red away from her, sweeping her off in the direction of a waiting ambulance. She lost the jacket at some point, she realizes, when Ressler tucks a shock blanket around her. She tucks her face into the crook of his neck and sobs.

Nobody asks Liz what happened to Kornish—they all think they already know. She’s glad. She prefers the lie of omission.

When she finds herself back at the Post Office later, overwhelmed by Tom’s protective smothering, Red is already waiting in her office with a warm mug of coffee and an anthology’s worth of stories. Liz asks him about the business card once, between descriptions of a Paris night and the chaos of Carnival, but he doesn’t answer.

It’s not forgotten, not really, but she isn’t given the opportunity to dwell on its meaning until some time later.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first section of this chapter is set roughly in the first season of POI and the Blacklist. The second is set post-Devil's Share from Person of Interest and some time during S2 of the Blacklist. Please excuse the discrepancy in the timelines. Unfortunately, while I do enjoy writing crossovers, I do not have the patience to work with canon time tables.

If you were to ask any number of his coworkers, they would tell you that there is nothing interesting at all about Harold Wren, IT. To the outside observer, he appears to be the quintessential cubicle dweller—wire-rimmed glasses and ill-fitting suit included. He clocks in a few minutes late, clocks out a few minutes early, and handles the harrying of Dave the Supervisor with the dignity of a man who Really Needs This Job. That is to say, he avoids eye contact and apologizes profusely for problems that often have very little to do with him. His code functions only slightly better than his social skills, and he eats more take-out than is probably healthy for a man his age. All in all, Harold Wren is the most astonishingly ordinary person to be currently employed by IFT.

In fact, the only thing that anyone might find at all unusual is a series of weeks when Harold Wren does not show up to work, instead sending a politely worded email to Dave the Supervisor citing the need to spend some time away. He uses up all of his paid and much of his unpaid leave in the process. Rumors float around the office of course, there’s not much else to do in the IT department of a company that employs a lofty number of computer geniuses, and speculation ranges from health problems to death in the family to mid-life crisis. No one once suspects that Wren’s sudden absence has anything to do with the dashing gentlemen spotted perched in Wren’s cubicle one prior and unassuming morning.

There is a great deal about Harold Wren that no one would suspect—the first and foremost being that this man’s name isn’t even Harold Wren.

There’s no indication that the true name of the man masquerading as Harold Wren has been long since buried under the lives of a dozen carefully crafted, avian-derived aliases, nor that the flighty Wren currently owns the company at which he is employed. Were they to look over his shoulder during business hours, they would perhaps find that Harold Wren spends very little of his time actually coding, and instead spends the majority of the office hours taking an ax to what is truly some of the most sophisticated work they’d ever seen—If they even bothered to look, that is. They certainly wouldn’t imagine that Harold Wren took an extended leave of absence not for any of the aforementioned reasons, but because the ex-covert operative currently on his payroll managed to find this alias’ place of employment and time was needed to ascertain the potential threat this knowledge posed in the hands of one John Reese.

When three weeks pass and there are no sudden audits, FBI raids, or shady characters lurking about, Harold Wren returns to work at a promptly tardy 8:03 AM (much to the dismay of Dave the Supervisor).

No one thinks to look in his briefcase for the meticulously designed business cards now associated with the arrest of a crooked prosecutor, the disappearance of a corrupt police officer, a truly impressive number of kneecappings, and the deaths of several hired assassins.

\--

“Are you quite done, Mr. Reese?” Harold grits out, tapping his fingers impatiently on the desk. He doesn’t receive a response, but the sudden agonized screaming that carries over the line serves as answer enough. Violence like this, the things John Reese is capable of when he decides to get creative, would have terrified Harold at one point. But that man belongs to a past life, before the ferry bombing pulled back the curtain and revealed the true horrors the world around him is capable of. That was the man before Harold Finch. Instead, he only feels a vague sense of satisfaction while he listens to Reese comfort their victim through his headset and knows that Stanley Kornish, whose picture hangs on a broken whiteboard, no longer poses a threat.

“The girl’s fine, Finch,” Reese says in his ear, “and the FBI are almost here. I’m making my way back now.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reese.” Finch murmurs, and leaves the line open as he begins to collect his things. Together he and John have already made quite a name for themselves in society’s shady underbelly. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that Harold Finch wonders how the CIA could have just thrown away such a wonderfully obedient operative. But alas, dawn is approaching, and Harold Finch must once again don the mal-adjusted guise of Harold Wren and report for another day in a cubicle hell.

\--(this is a time skip sorry for the poor transition lmao)--

Detective Lionel Fusco is rotund and short of stature, with small, watery eyes and a mop of short, curly hair. His suit is cheap, even for a man on a police salary, and there is a large stain of something suspicious on his tie. If you were to ask Keen what a dirty cop looked like, she would probably have given you a similar description. He is also the detective with the highest solve rate in the entire 8th precinct, which has earned him the questionable honor of lesioning between the NYPD and FBI. Liz tries not to think too hard about that as she trudges over to where Fusco is looking over their crime scene with the kind of professional detachment that comes with a lifetime of police work.

The Liz of today is almost unrecognizable as the terrified woman in a cabin from over a year ago. This Elizabeth Keen has short-cropped hair, steady hands on her weapon, and the kind of disillusioned outlook that tends to turn the average civilian off conversation. This Elizabeth Keen has seen too much and killed too many to have it any other way. This Elizabeth Keen had shot her own husband for the heinous act of aiming a gun at Raymond Reddington and daring to pull the trigger.

Red had survived, of course. He has a habit of doing that; like a cat that found a magic lamp and had the audacity to wish for more lives.

Which is how she wound up here, shivering her way through a bitter New York morning surrounded by a dozen bullet-ridden bodies in the otherwise unremarkable parking lot of a shady hotel. _Alonzo Quinn_ Red had said with his usual cryptic smile, eliciting a small groan from Liz. It isn’t like they haven’t been handed complicated cases before, but the bureaucratic posturing and paperwork involved with a witness in federal custody…

And it seems like there is going to be more paperwork than usual this time around. The taskforce had been summoned in the early hours of dawn, when the marshals guarding Quinn sent out a distress call citing an attack on the safehouse. By the time help arrived, the marshals were incapacitated, there were at least a dozen dead Russian soldiers in the parking lot, and Alonzo Quinn had long since bled out.

“Sorry to have to drag you out here like this,” Fusco says when Liz finally reaches him, thick with the typical New York drawl, “but there was a notice to inform you specifically if we ran into anything related to this guy. And this… this is definitely something, Agent…?”

“Agent Keen. And thank you for calling. What do you have so far?”

“Not a whole lot. No IDs on the guys in the parking lot, but their tattoos suggest the Russian mob. GSW’s to the lot of them, and a lot of empty casings laying around. Glass around the doorway is all blown out. Looks like some sort of firefight. Quinn took two in the chest and bled out in his room.”

“Did the cameras catch anything?” Liz can see several just from where she’s standing, and there are undoubtedly more hidden around. If Aram can get access to the feeds, they might be able to match the men responsible off facial recognition instead of hoping for fingerprints or DNA.

“Nah, all the footage since last night has been wiped. Whatever went down here, they didn’t want us seeing it. And we haven’t been able to get anything coherent out of the witnesses.”

“Witnesses?”

“Yeah, one of the Russian guys managed to get away with two in the kneecaps. EMTs carted him off to the hospital. Was raving about needing to give his boss a message or something. But if you ask me,” Fusco looks pointedly at the destruction around them, “consider the message received. The marshals weren’t much help either. According to them, they got taken out by one guy. Some sort of superman.”

Keen almost snorts, but manages to wrestle it into a sigh at the last moment. “You think somebody killed all these people to make a point?” She asks.

“Ain’t the worst I’ve seen,” Fusco drawls. Liz doesn’t doubt it.

“Ok. Thank you, Detective. Be sure to give me a call if you find anything else.”

“Oh, hey, Agent Keen,” Fusco calls before she can get more than a handful of steps away. He’s got an evidence bag in his hand, and brandishes it out toward her. “Forgot to mention, the Russian witness had this in his pocket. Figure you FBI guys can probably do more with it than we can.”

Liz takes the proffered bag. Inside is a familiar business card, one of its edges stained crimson with blood. She hastily shoves the bag into her coat pocket, trying to ignore the nausea growing in her gut.

“Thanks,” She says softly, and makes her way back to the car with as much haste as she dares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to try and keep the Blacklist plotline intact, but then I remembered that I would have to include Tom Keen. So I've killed Tom Keen. LMAO bye Tom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for Dark!Finch and graphic depictions of violence uvu  
> The first time I wrote this, it wasn't nearly as dark. But them my computer decided I had too many things running and it isn't paid enough for that so Word crashed and it couldn't recover that chapter. The second time around came out longer, but much closer to the OOC side of things. Meh. I like it.
> 
> Edit 1: Corrected formatting error why does Word have to make everything difficult aaaaaaa

Outside of the shelter of Keen and Ressler’s shared office, the Post Office is a flurry of activity; an artificial blizzard of paper and ink. Technicians rush to and fro, shuffling franticly through files and folders and reports as they try to sort out the _why’s_ and _how’s_ of the attack on Alonzo Quinn’s safehouse. Why the threat hadn’t shown up on their radar, how they got away with it, why this group attacked in the first place. There are much easier ways to take out a witness than clashing head-on with a dozen heavily armed Marshals.

Somewhere out there, Aram and Samar are likely up to their neck in paperwork over the night’s failure. Keen’s lays abandoned, strewn haphazardly over the surface of her desk half-completed. There’s something weighing on her mind about this whole situation. She plucks the little business card in its evidence bag from where it lay nearby, turning it over in her hands. There’s a team running DNA from the blood marring its surface, though the lab guys suspect it belongs to the Russian survivor they took the card from. Ressler’s stunted typing as he fills out his own reports, punctuated by the occasional agitated hiss and repetitive mashing of the delete key, is soothing in its familiarity. It allows her to push the chaos around them away, and focus instead on the problem at hand.

Red’s information has always been time-sensitive. That’s just a fact of law enforcement. Criminals have their own time frames, and those that hunt them have to work within those windows of opportunity. What bothers Keen is how fast this window closed. Red always gives them adequate time to work out the problem, but Quinn had been killed within the first twelve hours. Red never missed anything. A man can’t run from the FBI for as long as he has and make timing mistakes like this. Unless…

Unless. Liz scrutinizes the car, turning it over in her hands again, and thinks of a single scrap of burnt paper. The center of an elaborate web spread out across her living room floor. Unless Alonzo Quinn isn’t the focus at all.

She doesn’t realize she’s said it aloud until Ressler makes a questioning noise, looking up from his computer screens with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“I said, what if this isn’t about Quinn at all,” Liz repeats. “It didn’t make any sense to me that Reddington would give us a case with such a short window. But remember when we were hunting Berlin? He sent us out on dozens of seemingly unrelated cases that all ended up connecting like a road map to Berlin. What if this case is like that, and Alonzo Quinn is just the starting point?”

Ressler mulls that over for a moment, drumming his fingers against the surface of his desk. “I guess the question would be, if Alonzo Quinn isn’t who we’re supposed to be looking into, who is?”

“I don’t know,” Keen admits, “but I have a feeling that finding the owner of this card is a good place to start.”

\--

They only just arrive in time, Harold sweeping into Alonzo Quinn’s hotel room to find Reese poised above the cowering man like an avenging angel, made all the more intimidating by the blood that stains the fabric of his shirt. A testament to his conviction in seeing Quinn to justice. Root and Shaw hover in the doorway, knowing better than to approach Reese in this state and trusting in their employer to handle the situation. John Reese may be a loose cannon, but if anyone can get him back under control, it is Harold Finch.

Sure enough, Reese bends to Finch’s gentle coaxing, relinquishing the gun only moments before his strength finally gives out and he collapses to the floor. Finch himself is only strong enough to guide the other man’s fall. When he pulls away, John’s blood is coating his hands and shirtsleeves. John looks up at his employer, eyes wide with a desperate confusion. The gun is clasped tight in Harold’s trembling hand.

“Why didn’t we kill him, Finch?”

Joss Cater had always been the best of them. A truly magnificent woman, and an equally wonderful detective. Harold had always respected her, even when she was hunting them. When she joined them, she never allowed herself to be corrupted by the team’s rather questionable moral code, clinging tightly to her black and white beliefs. And while she frowned upon the blood that stained their hands, she never asked them to stop killing altogether. She understood that death ran in their nature, instead encouraging a change in their behavior one small step at a time. Leniency for their perpetrators, killing only when necessary, allowing the police to handle the case when the situation allowed.

This is the reason they had not simply killed Alonzo Quinn. Carter sacrificed her life to bring the man to justice legally, and Harold had been content to allow the courts to see him behind bars. To honor Joss Carter’s last wishes. He’s about to remind John of this, to remind them both of the promises they made to her, when Quinn has to open his mouth.

“You really should just put him out of his misery,” Quinn drawls, far too confident in Finch’s benevolence. “Would save you on the medical bills, at lea-”

The gun has fired before Finch has time to reconsider. Two bullets, their accuracy aided by the close quarters, sink into Quinn’s chest. Finch’s arm drops to his side, the weapon slipping from his grip and clattering to floor in his surprise. _Holy shit_ he thinks he hears one of the girls mutter in the doorway but his attention is focused on Quinn, who is coughing up blood and staring at Harold in genuine surprise. Like he really hadn’t expected Harold to have the stomach. Like he thought he could actually get away with the insinuation that John, or any of the others for that matter, are disposable when Reese’s blooding is growing cold and tacky on Harold’s hands and Simmons is in the wind and Joss Carter is _dead_.

The grouping isn’t as neat as it would be if the trigger had pulled by someone more familiar with firearms, but it will suffice. Harold is feeling alarmingly numb when he instructs the girls to get John out. Shaw picks the gun up from where it’s fallen, tucking it into the waistband of her pants before throwing one of John’s arms over her shoulder. Root does the same to his other arm, and then they’re hauling him from the room. There is a crumpled piece of paper on the floor at Quinn’s feet, and Harold picks it up. Simmons’ exit strategy is scrawled on its surface. As Harold limps from the room after Shaw and Root, he pulls out his phone to make a call.

He will have to visit Joss’ grave in the near future. He owes her one hell of an apology.

Shaw and Root are settling John into the backseat when Finch finally exits the building. The ex-operative is unresponsive, but he’s still breathing. There’s one Russian soldier left on the ground, alive and breathing. His screaming tapered off into pained whimpers while they were inside. Harold marches over to him, fishing a business card from his breast pocket and stooping to tuck it into one of the man’s pockets. Some of the blood from his hands smudges on the surface, and an abrupt wave of nausea washes over him. He’d come so close to losing another partner.

“You’re to tell your employer that if I ever hear of him again, I won’t be as lenient. Do you understand?”

The man nods frantically, teary eyed. The sirens of approaching backup are beginning to draw closer, so Finch pushes himself to his feet and climbs into the passenger’s seat of the waiting vehicle. With Root, and by association the Machine, behind the wheel they’ll be far away by the time the authorities arrive.

Across town, on the tarmac of the airfield Simmons is supposed to be leaving from, Lionel Fusco lays in wait with handcuffs and a rage fueled by bone-deep grief.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I left Lionel out of the raid on the safehouse because it bothered me in canon. The Marshals saw him come in with the team. They'd know he's involved in some sketchy business and would have definitely turned him over for investigation. Why did they leave him with Quinn. Why.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapter in one day? Who am I and what have I done with the author?  
> No content warning in this one. Unless you want to count bureaucratic peacocking.

Aram interrupts shortly after Liz has finishes her report. There are bags under his eyes and a coffee stain on his shirt, but he’s brandishing a slim file and wearing the kind of smile that means they’ve found something important and he’s the lucky number that gets to deliver the good news. Aram is always happy to be the bearer of good news.

“What’d you find, Aram?” She asks without preamble, otherwise it may take him a while to get to the point.

“DNA analysis on the card just came back. The lab guys were right: most of the blood belongs to Russian gangster. However, there was some DNA from another source. And we got a hit off the database.”

Aram drops the file onto her desk with what he probably assumes is an appropriate amount of flair. Keen just wants to get her hands on their lead. By the time she flips open the folder, Ressler has made his way over and is leaning over her shoulder. A photo of a middle-aged man stares back at them, blue eyes and dark hair that’s greying at the temples. He looks sour enough that this has to be an ID photo pulled from somewhere.

“His name is John Reese,” Aram continues. “His DNA and fingerprints have been found at dozens of crime scenes over the last two years, the earliest of which being an attack on the subway. Reese was apparently arrested after a couple of young delinquents thought he’d be easy to subdue. The fight did not go their way.”

“There’s not a lot else here,” Ressler comments, sounding grim. “A name is a great place to start, but we’re going to need something else to go on if we’re going to find this guy.”

“That’s all that was available online. Apparently all records pertaining to Mr. Reese are kept in hard copies by the group currently in charge of the investigation into him.”

“Hard copies?” Keen asks, “That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”

“According to the person I got I spoke to, the digital files kept getting corrupted. While a few times could be attributed to computer error, the frequency they’re talking has to be someone messing with that data on purpose.”

“How the hell are we supposed to get our hands on the hard copy, then?” Ressler grouses.

“I am already on it. You and Agent Keen have an appointment with the Office of Special Counsel just as soon as you can get to their offices. Apparently they do all the intermediating between the smaller intelligence groups.”

“Thanks, Aram. This is really great.” Liz smiles up at him, resisting the urge to giggle when he seems to preen from the praise.

“You’re very welcome, Agent Keen.”

And with that, he sweeps out the door. Likely to down another pot of coffee and do some more digging into their suspect. Ressler is already gathering his things and tugging on his coat.

“Come on, Keen,” he says, “we got a meeting to get to.”

\--

The Office of Special Counsel is, as it turns out, a rather nondescript place. There’s a rigorous security procedure, Keen and Ressler are required to hand over their firearms, but one they’re past the doors, it could be an office belonging to any other agency. Boring beige walls and telephones with cords. The kind of place Liz had imagined herself working before one of the FBI’s most wanted surrendered himself and uite literally demanded her attention. They’re directed into the office of Ross Garrison, who’s perched behind his desk frowning disapprovingly at the papers spread out on the desk. In one of the chairs is an intimidating neat woman with her hair pinned up in an equally intimidatingly neat bun. She is frowning disapprovingly at Garrison. Both heads swivel to watch Liz and Ressler enter the room, and Liz suddenly feels like a kid walking into the principal’s office.

“Special Agents Donald Ressler and Elizabeth Keen, with the FBI. We’re here about-“

“We know what you’re here about, Agent Ressler. Please, sit.”

With one chair occupied by the as of yet unidentified woman, Ressler has no choice but to stand at Keen’s shoulder when she drops into the remaining chair.

“So, tell me agents, what are you looking into John Reese for?” Garrison asks.

“My CI brought this case to our attention,” Liz says, “he thought it would be good for us to take a closer look at Mr. Reese and, if possible, his associates.”

“Has this CI of yours given you a reason as to _why_ you should be looking into John Reese?” The woman asks suspiciously.

“Not… quite.” Keen sputters, feeling her cheeks heat. “But he’s never given us ad information. If he thinks we need to take a closer look, I’m inclined to believe him.”

“Right,” Garrison mutters, “here’s the thing, Agents. As you’re already aware, there is a case open on Mr. Reese’s organization already. Control here, who heads up the group running that case, has some concerns that handing you this information might pose a threat to national security.”

“National security?” Ressler scoffs, “We work for the FBI. Why would us having access to that file pose a threat to national security?”

The woman they now know to be named Control, a rather appropriate codename all things considered, scowls at them. "Those flies contain sensitive documents, including the details of several intelligence operations that go way above your clearance. The ISA can’t afford those details to falling into the wrong hands.”

“And my CI is never wrong,” Liz hisses back. “If he’s pointing us toward Reese, then he’s involved in something larger that almost definitely _will_ create a national security threat.”

Garrison and Control share a look, and the former sighs. “Alright. The ISA will hand over the documents pertaining to Reese and his associates. They’ll be sent over by courier first thing in the morning. Anything else, agents?”

“That’ll be it,” Ressler says, stepping out of Keen’s way so she can rise from the chair. “Thank you for your time.”

Control’s eyes follow them all the way out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that Garrison's official title is Senator, but I don't think we ever find out who takes over Special Counsel after the season 2 finale, so I've made do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz hates spies and pays a visit to a familiar face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am mean to Captain America in this chapter. I am sorry Donald, but sometimes you do things that make me wonder how you got to the conclusion that what you're doing is the appropriate response to the situation at hand.
> 
> Additionally: I've added a slow burn tag, because it occurs to me that I actually haven't touched much on anybody's relationships yet. That's coming here soon I promise.

“Will you look at this?” Liz snarls, flipping through the files that the courier recently delivered. The papers have been dumped carelessly over the surface of Keen’s desk, some of the pages possibly getting mixed in with the wrong file due to the rough handling. Not that it would make a difference either way: nearly all of the pages are blank. Or not blank, per say, but illegible. There could be words hidden on the page, if one could only get past the walls of black ink that cover them. The files are redacted. All of them. Even the photographs of Reese’s associates have been deemed too sensitive for their eyes. In fact, the only thing that remains uncovered is the information in John Reese’s file that they’d been able to find online and his photograph. Which means they’re essentially right back where they started, only now with several hundreds of dollars’ worth of printer ink in their hands.

Samar, who had offered to help Keen sort through the information while Ressler and Aram look into security footage from the surrounding buildings, frowns at her own equally illegible pages. “If they were going to do this, why didn’t they just tell you no when you asked?”

“Because then it would look like they weren’t cooperating, and we could take this to someone higher who might have forced them to hand over the files. We can’t do that now that they’ve given us access, however little access it is.” Liz groans and flips one of the files closed, a few more papers fluttering to the floor. Nobody bothers to collect them. “God, I hate spies.”

Samar’s lips twitch in an aborted grin. “You have more cause to hate them than most.”

It earns her a glare from Keen, but is well worth it. She stands, fishing through her pockets for her cell phone and heading for the door. “I’m going to go make a few calls. See if any of my Mossad contacts have heard anything.”

“Thanks.”

The other woman’s exit is excellently timed, because Liz’s phone begins to ring not a moment later. The caller ID reads _Nick’s Pizza_.

Liz leads with, “Alonzo Quinn is dead,” in hopes of heading off any meandering conversations Red may have planned.

“So I heard,” he says, and sounds far too joyful about the matter. The last shred of hope Liz has been harboring that maybe Red didn’t know about the approaching attack abruptly vanishes. “Any news on the attackers?”

“We managed to ID one of the shooters. His name’s John Reese. Other than that, we’ve got nothing. There’s an active case file on Reese and his associates, but you know how spies feel about inter-agency cooperation.”

Red hums thoughtfully from the other end of the line. Liz thinks she can hear papers rustling in the background and absently wonders what he may be up to currently. Whatever it is, it can likely be summed up in its entirety by the phrase _no good._

“Samar volunteered to ask around with her Mossad contacts, but with the ISA is playing this as close to the chest as they are, I doubt they’re going to know anything.”

“I see. And do you have a plan for how to proceed? If that line of questioning doesn’t pan out?”

Liz considers the mountain of redacted documents a moment more. “Yeah, I think I do.”

\--

“What are we doing here, Keen?” Ressler asks.

They’re standing in front of a large, two-storied home just outside of the city limits and surrounded by several acres of woods. When Keen dragged him out and told him they’d be paying a visit to one of Red’s contacts, he’d expected a clandestine meeting in some dark alley or seedy bar. These, in Ressler’s standard, government-issued worldview, seemed like the appropriate settings for the kind of people that thrived in the criminal underworld.

It is, perhaps, the reason Donald Ressler spent five years hunting Raymond Reddington only to be met with resounding failure when the subject of his investigation surrendered himself to another agent entirely.

Keen doesn’t respond to his question, choosing to ring the doorbell instead of answering. There’s a large, black duffel bag slung over one of her shoulders. She’d picked it up during a stop into a charming suburban neighborhood on the way, where a middle-aged mother had chattered on about the latest gossip about the PTA and pressed a storage container full of cookies into their hands along with the bag. Keen hadn’t answered Ressler’s earlier queries into its contents.

The door opens to reveal an older gentleman with thick glasses and a receding hairline. He scowls at Ressler, but perks up at the sight of Keen.

“Miss Watkins!” He exclaims, smile bright and friendly, “Red told me you might be coming by.”

“Hey, Haskell,” she responds, allowing herself to be dragged into an enthusiastic hug. When he finally relinquishes her, his suspicious gaze returns to Ressler. “Who’s you friend?”

“Private security. My last expose, well…” Liz leans in, dropping her voice conspiratorially, “the people in charge didn’t take it very well.”

Liz has been working with Reddington for barely more than a year, but in that time has managed to cultivate more aliases than most field agents do in a lifetime. He makes a mental note to add Watkins to his files when they return to the office.

Her answer draws a delighted laugh from the man, who steps to the side and gestures for them to enter with the line, “You can never be too careful with the government types.”

The inside of the house, much like its exterior, is suspiciously unsuspicious. Haskell, as far as any stranger could tell, would appear to be just another retiree enjoying the benefits of a career well chosen. Dusty golf clubs sit in one corner and pictures of young grandchildren at play hang on the walls. There’s a crossword puzzle laying half-finished on a coffee table when their host leads them past it. What is strange is how quiet the two have suddenly gotten. Considering their loud and enthusiastic greeting, it’s a startling change of pace. Ressler, however narrow in his worldview, would consider himself at quite adept at picking up on social ques and chooses to remain silent until one of the others speaks. The answer to whether or not his self-assessment is accurate may depend on to whom the question is asked.

It’s only when the door to Haskell’s cluttered and cage-like study closes behind them that Keen leans over to whisper, “V2K-shielded.”

The silence suddenly makes a lot more sense.

“What can I do for you this time, Miss Watkins?” Haskell asks, pushing a neat stack of papers aside to make space for Keen’s duffel bag. “More social-science experiments to expose?”

“I’m actually looking into something else, this time. Red warned me it might be best to give that a wide berth until the heat from my last article dies down.”

“Smart, smart,” Haskell mumbles, hastening to straighten a folder slightly-skewed when Keens bag slides further than expected on the table’s sleek surface. “What are you working on now?”

“I’m actually looking into the death Alonzo Quinn up in New York. Maybe you’ve heard? I have a source that swears up and down that there’s some conspiracy behind it, and was hoping you might have some copies of files on someone I believe is related to the case.”

Ressler realizes abruptly, as Keen unzips the duffel to reveal a truly staggering amount of cash, that he really should have seen it coming. Information is never free. The ease with which Keen is throwing Red’s money around, however, is another new thing to add to his ever-growing files on Elizabeth Keen and her partnership with Raymond Reddington.

Haskell apparently finds the payment sufficient, and turns to begin rifling through drawers. “And just who is it I’m looking for?” he asks.

“The file has him listed as John Reese. It’d be from the Intelligence Support Activity, if that helps. Anything on him or his associates would be helpful.”

Haskell stiffens in his search and levels a solemn look at Keen over his shoulder. “That’s quite a can of worms you’re opening, Miss Watkins. The ISA is going to be far less forgiving of your trespasses into their business than others have been in the past.”

“I know what I’m doing, Haskell,” she huffs. “Do you have them or not?”

Haskell sighs and replaces the cash-filled duffel with a thick file on the tabletop. “Everything the ISA has on John Reese and company. Anything else?”

“That’s it,” Keen says with a tight-lipped smile, picking up the folder. “Thank you so much, Haskell.”

They’re nearly out of the house when Haskell calls after them.

“Miss Watkins,” Liz turns to face him where he’s standing in the doorway of the study, brow drawn in concern, “do be careful.”

Her smile is softer, more genuine this time. “Thank you. I will.”

Keen casts one last look at the house as they pull back down the winding driveway, their prize gripped tight between her fingers. Ressler can’t help the swell of relief that washes over him at the possibility of finally moving forward with their case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the idea of Liz getting familiar with Red's people. I love the idea of Liz being able to go to them and use those resources once Red opens the door. The woman they get the money from is the counterfeiter we met in S1, and Haskell is from the episode "Dr. Linus Creel" of s2.
> 
> Next time: We'll see what Team Machine's up to!

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed every single fucking minute of writing this. It was so much fun to write.  
> The Stewmaker in Blacklist canon is one of my favorite episodes in the entire show. Especially Liz's rescue and the parable of the farmer. It is literal cinematic gold. I just thought this would be an interesting way to introduce Team Machine without jumping straight into an FBI manhunt.


End file.
